A evo malo i o samoj knjizi
Imam sve vecu zelju da je procitam
The Satanic Verses is a fantasy about two actors from India traveling on an airplane. After a terrorist bomb blows up the airplane, they fall to Earth and survive. The controversial parts of the book center on just two chapters.
One of the Indian actors apparently is losing his mind. He dreams about God revealing his will to the Prophet Muhammad, who passes on the sacred words to humanity through the Koran, the holy book of Islam. But the novel refers to Muhammad by an insulting name used by Christians in the Middle Ages. As part of the dream sequence, a scribe called "Salman" writes down God's commands that are coming from the lips of Muhammad. The scribe, however, decides to play a trick by changing some of the divine words. Since Muslims hold the Koran as the revealed word of God, they deplored Rushdie for ridiculing it.
The title of the book refers to an old legend retold by Rushdie. According to the legend, some of the Koran's original verses originated with Satan, and Muhammad later deleted them. By repeating this legend, Rushdie offended Muslims by associating the holy Koran with the work of Satan.
One part of the novel probably outraged Muslims the most. It describes people mocking and imitating Muhammad's 12 wives. Muslims revere Muhammad's wives as the "mothers of all believers."
Most Muslims reacted with shock and anger at these passages from The Satanic Verses. They felt that they had been betrayed by one of their own. Rushdie had been born a Muslim. Muslims accused Rushdie of turning his back on his roots to embrace Western culture. In the minds of many, The Satanic Verses symbolized the hostility of the West against the Islamic world.
A month after its publication, India banned the book. Bannings soon followed in Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and other countries with large Muslim populations. Anti-Rushdie demonstrations and book burnings took place in Britain.
Rushdie attempted to defend himself. He pointed out that his book was, after all, a work of fiction and that the part of the book that offended Muslims consisted of one character's deranged dreams. But this did not silence his critics. They demanded that the British government ban the book as blasphemous. The government refused on the grounds that English law protected only the Christian religion from acts of blasphemy